This is not the same old kind of survey that we are used to seeing. Check it out! (I am posting this for Ty.)______________________________________________________________________________________

I'm Ty, an asexual researcher doing my PhD on joint formation of online asexual communities and identities. As part of my preliminary studies I'm looking at various online asexuality communities and comparing members experiences and habits on them. I hope to do this by collecting responses to a survey I have set up from an assortment of communities.

It should take between 15 and 30 minutes to complete and aims to help researchers understand the assortment of communities that exist online for asexuals rather than only knowing about and always referring to AVEN. More information is available on the briefing page of the survey.

Bugger, non-asexuals cannot take the survey. This leaves me rather disappointed, as someone who was an AVENite for around three years, as well as a member of apositive and the A-sylum for about three years each as well. I don't know what the survey is looking for exactly, but it seems to me that if it is about the communities, long time members who may not be asexual could very well provide just as much insight as asexual members, perhaps even more insight than the recent members who do identify as asexual and thus qualify.

I'm sorry to disappoint. The reason that the survey is disqualifies people who are not asexual identified from taking it is that my prevailing research interest (and indeed the topic of my PhD) is how online asexual communities contribute to the formation of people's asexual identities. One aim of this survey is to sketch any significant nuances in internalised asexual identities between, for example, people who have primarily been exposed to asexuality on livejournal (for example) to those on apositive and those on AVEN. As such the questions are geared much more towards asexual identified people, and I fear that had you attempted to take the survey you would have been just as frustrated because there are so many questions that would not apply to you.

I did look at hiding those questions which are not relevant to non-asexual people based on the response to that initial question, however upon exploring this I discovered that over half of the questionnaire was removed.

Thank you for your enthusiasm for participating in this research however. If you are still keen to let me know your thoughts, I could send you a copy of the survey cut down and rephrased in a way that makes sense for non asexual identified individuals.

Sorry once again that you feel excluded from this research. I hope my explanation has relieved some of your concern but if you are still wanting to share your views and experience I will gladly receive them

A few people have commented on my inclusion of the category "trans" as a gender in questions on the respondents own gender and those to whom they are romantically attracted, largely criticising it for othering trans people and/or devaluing transmen and transwomen's identities as 'real' men and women. I wanted to respond to this with an explanation: I have included trans as a separate category (and a box to allow people to further expand on their gender identity in particular) mainly with the intention of providing non-binarily gendered and/or bi-gendered (among others) individuals who may feel an affinity to the term trans the opportunity to self-report as such. At present I have a number of respondents who have self-reported as trans, some of whom who have elaborated, some of whom have not, which I feel vindicates my decision to include it as a category for analysis. The question asks about gender and not [current] sex, birth sex, assigned gender (which I considered including but decided against doing so as it was not of critical relevance to this project and I did not wish to force transsexed individuals into disclosing if they do not want to. I encourage transsexed individuals to select whichever options they feel more of an affinity to - be it man, woman, trans or other.

Similarly, trans was included as a category in the question on romantic attraction to allow for the possibility of genderqueers, androgynes and so on as objects of romantic attraction.

I hope that elays some of the concern regarding my intentions including trans as a category for gender.

I would be happy to take a cut-down version of the survey, but only if it will help your research. That did indeed answer my concerns, though it leaves me wondering if my answers would even be useful. If you think it may help, then go ahead and send me a copy (pm will do fine).